The Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention (AAACP), a collaboration of Ugandan and North American Infectious Diseases specialists, was launched in June 2001 with a vision to deliver enhanced HIV care to African patients. A primary objective of the AAACP is to engage in capacity' building to train African health care providers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, counselors, laboratory technologists, and others) in the delivery of advanced HIV care and prevention with the intended goal that these trainees will prioritize knowledge transfer and extend their new knowledge and developed skill sets to regions beyond local AAACP activities. A second equally important objective is to carry out operational research on a large cohort of HIV/AIDS infected patients to learn enhanced strategies including use of ARVs to improve prevention and care of HIV / AIDS in the African setting and use this research infrastructure for training. The resources of Makerere University Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Public Health will be combined with those of the AAACP into an integrated training strategy.